Genesis 2.8 provides developers with new tools to make Genesis themes with less code and better user experience!
Child themes, now config-driven
Child themes should be simple. But lately, they’ve been getting more and more complicated. So in Genesis 2.8, we’re introducing a new function to locate and load config files to enable and configure Genesis features – features such as a new onboarding experience, custom header images, default editor colors, and font size selections, using the new block editor in WordPress 5.0.
This new configuration-driven approach will allow us to build more features into Genesis, while only loading the ones your child theme needs.
New child theme onboarding experience
Have you ever activated a WordPress theme and been disappointed by that first impression?
Sometimes starting from scratch is too intimidating — or too time consuming.
Genesis 2.8, when running on WordPress 5.0 or later, includes a new “onboarding” tool. This allows Genesis theme users to import some homepage demo content, just to help get things started.
Of course, the homepage can also be built using the new block editor released with WordPress 5.0.
Just install the theme as you normally would, and the onboarding tool will walk you through the process.
This new feature only requires a config file (loaded using the new config loader), and no special code!
You can see the onboarding feature in action by using the Genesis Sample child theme beta, currently available on our Github. Install the Genesis Beta plugin from here.
Get all the details
We keep a detailed changelog for each release. The changelog for Genesis 2.8 can be found here.